The Night Gate

Chapter Twenty-Two

The old lady sits in silence. Her eyes closed. And he watches the infinitely slow rise and fall of her chest as she collects her thoughts.

Suddenly she opens her eyes again and turns her head to look at him. A sad little smile animates her face, and she continues with her story...

Georgette was in Paris for more than a year, monsieur. To her it felt like a lifetime of incarceration. All through that winter of 1940 into 1941, and then the next. 1941 into 1942. Spring was on the horizon. A change in the air. Gone were the February frosts, and warm air was pushing up from Africa to bring leaves prematurely to the trees of the city’s boulevards.

All that time she had spent buried away in the basement of the Jeu de Paume. Cataloguing incoming art, keeping a secret log for Rose of all outgoing shipments. The Friday evening meals at Lange’s apartment had become both a fixture and a bright spot in her dull routine. A routine that seemed to hold out little hope, if any, of the chance to fulfil the role with which she had been charged by de Gaulle.

From time to time Lange returned to Germany for short periods of leave, and she found that she missed him. Missed his dry sense of humour, the way he poked gentle fun at her. Missed their lively exchanges long into the evening on subjects as diverse as art and politics, philosophy and literature. Missed his cooking, and the sound of his voice when she made him laugh. Missed the way he looked at her with fond, smiling eyes when she told him stories of childhood, of growing up in Bordeaux. His periods of absence seemed interminable, even if only for two or three weeks. Those Friday evenings at his apartment in the Rue de Rivoli were all that kept her sane during these long months spent treading water at the Jeu de Paume.

And yet in all that time, there had never once been a hint of impropriety. No accidental touching of hands, meaningful looks or nearly kisses. Nothing to suggest that he had designs on her in any sexual sense. And although, perhaps, some part of her felt disappointed that he showed no interest in her that way, she had long since stopped feeling threatened by him, or trying to discern some hidden motive for his weekly invitations to dine at his apartment. They were simply two people taking comfort in the predictability of an uncomplicated relationship in an uncertain world.

It was a beautiful early spring day, some time in mid-March, when Georgette heard a commotion from the main gallery upstairs as she was cataloguing a fresh arrival of artworks in the basement. There were raised voices, and footsteps clattering across the parquet, and she hurried up the stairs to see what was going on. Several staff were running out into the gardens, Rose among them. German soldiers who were a fixture at the museum followed curiously in their wake.

Georgette ran the length of the grand gallery, casting her shadow through the wedges of sunshine that fell from arched windows, and out into the Tuileries. She smelled woodsmoke, and the antiseptic perfume of hot turps and burning oil, and saw clouds of dark smoke billowing up into the clear blue of the Paris sky. Several tarp-covered troop carriers were pulled up side by side on the path. Soldiers inside were throwing frames and canvasses out of the trucks. A hushed crowd had gathered around the blaze. A large bonfire that crackled and burned, and threw up sparks with the smoke as soldiers on the ground piled yet more paintings on to the flames.

Georgette elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, and stopped, open-mouthed, as she saw priceless works consigned to the conflagration. Hitler’s ‘degenerate art’. A Picasso that she recognised. Works by Degas, and Manet, and Henri Matisse. Van Gogh. André Derain. It was unthinkable. She wanted to scream at them to stop. But knew it was pointless. Someone somewhere had ordered this vandalism. To prove what? Power? Strength? Stupidity?

To the soldiers carrying out orders, it meant nothing. The burning of refuse. Bits of wood and canvas. But Georgette could see the dismay on the faces of those German officers permanently stationed at the gallery. Mirroring the stricken look on the face of Rose Valland who stood on the far side of the flames. Georgette caught her eye through the smoke and the air that shimmered in the heat of the fire, and each shared the pain of this moment of barbarism.

Among the crowd, but a little apart from it, stood a man she recognised. He wore a black leather flying jacket and a peaked cap embellished with the insignia of the Luftwaffe. It took her a moment to remember him as the officer who had berated her on the steps of the museum during Göring’s visit the day after her arrival in Paris. His face was set, his skin pale. Whether simply a winter pallor or shock at what he witnessed, she couldn’t tell. His eyes flickered in her direction and he saw that she was watching him. She looked quickly away, and when next she dared to steal another glance, he was gone.

A hammering on the door echoed through Rose’s apartment, and startled Georgette awake. She had been so deeply asleep that it was some moments before she could shake herself free of it and make sense of what it was that had wakened her. She turned on her bedside lamp and sat up, reaching for her watch. It was after two and there was rain pattering against the window in the darkness outside.

She heard Rose’s bedroom door opening and her footsteps in the hall. Something in the small, hurried steps conveyed fear. The banging on the door had not stopped.

Georgette slipped from her bed, pushing her feet into a pair of slippers, and wrapped a towelling robe around herself. The hall light was on as she stepped out of her room, and she saw a dishevelled Rose, tying her dressing gown at the waist as she opened the door.

The landing light threw the long shadows of two men across the hall floor. They each wore three-quarter-length leather coats and wide-brimmed black hats. One of them stepped forward and barked in Rose’s face. ‘Georgette Pignal?’

Rose took a step back in fright and half turned towards Georgette.

Georgette hurried quickly towards the door. ‘That’s me,’ she said.

In bad French the one who had barked at Rose said, ‘You come with us.’

‘Who are you?’ Rose stood her ground defiantly.

‘Geheime Staatspolizei.’

Words that chilled Georgette to the bone. The Gestapo.

‘What do you want with her?’ Rose demanded.

‘None of your business!’ He looked beyond her at Georgette. ‘You come. Now.’

Georgette was gripped by panic, her breath coming in short bursts. ‘If you give me a minute to get changed...’ Anything to delay the moment.

‘No need for that.’ He took three quick steps into the hall and grasped her arm. Fingers of steel clamped around soft flesh. She almost fell as he pulled her towards the door. When they reached the landing the second Gestapo officer grabbed her other arm, and between them they half dragged her towards the stairs. Georgette was in tears by now, and threw a panicked backward glance towards Rose who stood helplessly in the doorway, all colour leached from her face.

The room was dark. There were no windows. Georgette sat in a chair at a scarred wooden table stained by blood and tears. A solitary desk lamp, its cable trailing away across the floor, cast a pool of cold harsh light on the wood. Otherwise the room was empty. The night outside was warm, a soft mist lingering on the river. In here the air was cold and fetid and Georgette shivered in her robe and slippers, hugging herself to keep warm.

Neither Gestapo officer had spoken to her on the journey through Paris to the apartment block at eight-four Avenue Foch, an address known to every citizen in the city. An address that inspired fear. An address whose visitors walked upright through the front door and left horizontally via the back. They had marched her up stairs to the sixth floor. Then left her alone, seated at this table which bore witness to all those who had passed through here before her. She faced the door and dreaded the moment it would open again. If she closed her eyes and wished long enough and hard enough it might never happen. And she would waken to find herself in her bedroom at Rose’s apartment realising it had all been a bad dream. But the light on the desk burned red through her eyelids, and no matter how hard she tried, reality closed in all around her, like hands in the dark.

The sound of the door opening crashed through her desperate attempts to wish it all away, and she opened her eyes, temporarily blinded and blinking in the light, to see the figure of a man silhouetted against the illumination of the hallway behind him. He closed the door and was consumed by darkness before stepping up to stand just beyond the circle of light around the table. He held his shiny-peaked Luftwaffe cap in his hand, and his leather jacket hung open. He placed his hat on the tabletop and turned the chair around. He sat, straddling the seat, and arranged his arms on the back of it. Then leaned into the light.

He gazed thoughtfully at her for a very long time. She stared back at him. He had such cold blue eyes, and dark hair so black she suspected it could be dyed. In other circumstances she might have thought him handsome. Ages, perhaps with Lange. And suddenly she remembered his name. Wolff. She heard Lange’s voice on the steps of the Jeu de Paume as clearly as if he were in the room with them. And how ardently she wished that he was. Lay off her, Wolff, it was an accident. Was it a Christian or a surname? She took a gamble, based on Lange’s tone, and tried to keep the tremor from her voice.

‘Why am I here, Herr Wolff?’

He raised a lazy eyebrow in half surprise. ‘So you know my name?’

‘It’s on the lips of every socialite in Paris.’

He frowned and she saw that she had disconcerted him, if only momentarily. ‘No doubt Herr Lange has discussed me with you at length.’

‘Actually, he’s never mentioned you. Not even once.’

‘So how do you know my name?’

‘It’s what he called you when you were so rude to me on the steps of the Jeu de Paume.’

He considered this for some time, pursing his lips and nodding almost imperceptibly. ‘What is your relationship with Paul Lange?’

‘I have no relationship with him.’

‘Yet you spend every Friday evening at his apartment.’

‘Not by choice.’

He canted his head sceptically. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Do you have sex with him?’

‘Of course not!’

It was clear he did not believe her. ‘So what do you talk about during all those long evenings?’

‘He cooks for me. And we talk about art.’

‘How very cosy. You know that he is married.’

It wasn’t a question. But as a statement of fact it struck her with the force of a blow to the midriff. And he saw that he had hit home. Not that Lange had ever told her he wasn’t. The subject had never arisen. And why would it? They were not in a relationship, after all. Still, it felt like something of a betrayal. For more than a year, they had been spending their Friday evenings together in his apartment. Why wouldn’t he have told her?

‘And two children.’ Wolff smirked. ‘Where do you think he goes when he returns to Germany on leave?’

Georgette tried to recover herself. ‘Home, of course. And why wouldn’t he?’

‘So he told you?’

And for some reason she found herself unable to lie about it. ‘The question never came up.’

He smiled again. ‘I bet it didn’t.’ He reached into an inside pocket of his leather jacket and drew out a folded wad of papers which he carefully smoothed out on the table in front of him. Without looking up, he said, ‘Where were you between May and December 1940?’

Fear prickled all across her skin. ‘I was unwell. I spent most of that time recuperating at the home of friends of my parents in the Charente.’

‘Ye-es...’ he drawled. ‘So you said in your statement to the occupying authority.’ Now he looked at her very directly. ‘But I have obtained papers from official French records which show that you volunteered for the Armée de Terre in the autumn of 1939, and that in May of 1940 you were given compassionate leave to travel to London following the death of your mother.’

And she knew that she was finished. If Wolff had acquired official French records then she had been caught cold in a lie. It was almost a relief to no longer have to carry on the subterfuge. Still, she was not going to admit to anything. Her eyes flickered towards his cap on the table.

‘You’re not Gestapo,’ she said.

‘Good heavens, no!’ As if he might have taken offence had she suggested it. ‘But I have some influence. And they have their uses.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘I want to know about your relationship with Lange.’

‘I told you. I have no relationship with him.’

At which he leaned further into the light, an intensity burning behind the cold light of chilling eyes. ‘I don’t think you understand, mademoiselle, just how much trouble you are in.’

The sound of the door slamming open behind him startled Wolff out of the circle of light. He jumped to his feet and spun around. A fine plaster dust from the hole punched in the wall by the door handle billowed into the room.

Even in silhouette, Georgette could see that it was Lange. He wore his greatcoat, and army cap, and seemed enormous, framed as he was in the doorway. He reached for a light switch and a single, overhead lamp washed the room in sudden cold light. One of the Gestapo officers who had brought Georgette to Avenue Foch stood agitating at his back.

‘You cannot come in here, Hauptmann.’

Lange turned slowly to cast him a withering look. ‘I am here on the authority of the Führer himself. If you have a problem with that, then you had better take it up with him.’

He stepped around Wolff, who stood rooted to the spot, and took off his coat to drape over Georgette’s shoulders and raise her gently to her feet. ‘I’m deeply sorry for this,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you home.’

As he guided her towards the door Wolff moved to block their way. The two men were face to face, just inches apart.

‘Get out of my way, Wolff.’ Lange almost spat the words in his face.

Wolff was unflinching. ‘You’ve gone a step too far this time, Lange.’

‘Have I?’

‘Maybe you think a piece of paper from the office of the Führer can keep you safe forever. But you’re wrong.’ He pushed his face even closer. ‘Sooner or later I’ll deal with you.’ And he turned his contempt towards Georgette. ‘Both of you.’

Lange placed a hand squarely on Wolff’s chest and pushed hard enough to make the other man take a backward step. ‘I’m not the pushover I was twenty years ago, Wolff. If you mess with me again you’ll do so at your cost.’

He steered Georgette, then, towards the door, forcing the Gestapo officer to step aside, and they passed on to the landing and the staircase beyond. Georgette’s legs nearly folded beneath her in relief, and only Lange’s strong arm around her shoulders kept her on her feet.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. And wasn’t sure whether she was thanking the man, or the God who had sent him.

A car with driver stood idling out in the Avenue Foch and took them back to Lange’s apartment in the Rue de Rivoli. Lange sat close to her in the back seat, so that she felt the warmth of his body next to hers. They passed the journey without a word.

By the time he got her up the stairs to his apartment she was almost ready to collapse. She allowed him to lead her into the sitting room where the embers of a coal fire in the hearth still warmed the air. He lowered her into the settee, finally removing his coat from her shoulders and throwing it across an armchair. He sat down beside her, and quite involuntarily she threw her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, tears releasing the toxicity of fear that had built up inside her during the last hours. She felt his arms encircle her, and as she turned her face up to meet his, their lips met for the first time. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world and they each surrendered to it without reserve. With her hand on his face she felt the stubble of a day’s growth, smelled the warm, earthy perfume of his body. And then it was over.

They moved apart, quite suddenly, as if shocked by what had just passed between them, and he seemed flustered, almost embarrassed. He stood up. ‘I’ll get you something to drink.’

He returned with a large Cognac and soda in a glass full of ice cubes. She received it in both hands to sip gratefully, feeling the healing cold of it fresh on her lips, the alcohol warming her inside. He moved his coat and sat on the edge of the chair opposite, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. There was genuine concern in his eyes.

‘Will you be okay?’

She nodded and said, ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘When I called you that first time, I gave you my number. It must still have been by the phone. Mademoiselle Valland called me.’ And Georgette realised then that she probably owed her life to Rose. Lange reached out a hand to place over hers. ‘What did he do to you?’

She shook her head. ‘He didn’t do anything.’

‘Then what did he want?’

‘He wanted to know about my relationship with you.’ She saw his mouth set.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That we had no relationship. That I came here every Friday evening because you wanted me to, and that I didn’t feel I could refuse.’ Which appeared to unsettle him. He sat back a little.

‘And is that how you feel? Really?’

‘No, of course not.’ She hesitated for a long moment. ‘Wolff said you were married.’ And somehow there was an accusation implicit in it. Lange stood up and turned towards the fireplace.

‘Yes,’ he said, his back to her so that she couldn’t see his face.

‘You never told me.’

He turned. ‘There didn’t seem any point. It’s a marriage in name only. My wife was seeing someone even before the war began. But she’s a Catholic. So divorce isn’t an option.’ Bitterness crept into his voice then. ‘Adultery, it seems, is an acceptable sin. But God forbid you break the rules of the club by asking for a divorce.’

Georgette searched his face and saw only pain there. In her mind she wrestled with mixed emotions. Confusion. Disappointment. Relief. Jealousy. ‘Why do you think Wolff had me arrested?’

Lange sighed. ‘We have a history, Karlheinz and I.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We were students together at university in Frankfurt. Both of us majoring in the history of art.’ He shook his head and chuckled at the irony. ‘We were actually friends then. Part of a group, you know. A bunch of us who socialised, studied together, talked art and philosophy and religion together. And there was this girl...’ He laughed, but without humour. ‘Isn’t there always? Hanna. A beautiful young woman. Smart, talented. Classic Aryan looks. Blond-haired, blue-eyed. She and Wolff were a thing, right from first year. By third year they were engaged. He didn’t see any point in hanging around. Was even prepared to drop out of university to marry her.’

He moved away again, towards the fire, and stooped to scoop up a small shovelful of coal to feed the embers. As he stood, he turned again to Georgette.

‘Of course she cheated on him.’

And she guessed what was coming. ‘With you.’

He nodded. ‘I’m not proud of it. At the time it didn’t really mean anything. We were at a Christmas party, and we both had too much to drink. If Karlheinz hadn’t found out, it probably wouldn’t have altered the course of events. But he did. And, boy, did it change things.’

He slumped into his armchair again as she leaned forward on her elbows, sipping at her Cognac and soda, watching him closely while he spoke. He was somewhere far away, in a long-distant youth, reliving mistakes, rekindling regrets.

‘Karlheinz has the most foul temper, and is very much prone to bouts of anger-fuelled violence. In this case, directed at me. He sought me out in the student common room, and simply attacked me. With fists and feet and head. I never saw it coming. Had no reason to expect it. I didn’t even know he’d found out about me and Hanna. I was down on the floor before I knew what was happening.’

She saw the pain of recollection in his eyes.

‘I didn’t have a lot of meat on my bones in those days. Didn’t stand a chance. I actually think he might have killed me if the others hadn’t pulled him off. I had broken ribs, a broken nose and jaw. I missed weeks of lectures.’

‘What happened to Wolff?’

‘Someone reported him to the hierarchy.’ He added quickly, ‘It wasn’t me. He was summoned to a meeting with the head of the university and summarily expelled.’

‘And Hanna?’

‘Oh, she and Wolff were finished. She was appalled by what he had done to me. And he wouldn’t have had her back anyway. He saw it as humiliation. Would never have forgiven her.’ He stretched himself out in the armchair and let his head fall back, eyes closed. ‘And here’s the irony. It was me that ended up marrying her.’ He opened his eyes and pushed himself up again, barely able to meet Georgette’s eyes. ‘Yes.’ He nodded in response to her unspoken question. ‘The same woman who cheated on me seventeen years later. Who gave me two beautiful daughters that she won’t even let me see now.’ The smile that curled his lips was filled with bitterness. ‘You’d have thought that might have been revenge enough for Wolff.’

‘And that’s why he had me arrested by the Gestapo? To get back at you?’

Lange shrugged doubtfully. ‘In part, maybe. But there’s more to it than that.’

Georgette cradled her now empty glass between cupped hands and sat forward. ‘I don’t understand. What?’

Lange looked at her very directly. ‘He knows you were in London. He knows about de Gaulle. We have the same friends in common there. I’m sure he thinks that by getting at you he’s undermining me.’

‘Just because of what happened at university?’

Lange shook his head. ‘Because I know the reason he’s here in Paris.’

‘Which is?’

‘To procure the Mona Lisa for Hermann Göring’s private collection.’

The glass slipped from Georgette’s hand and smashed on the floor.

Lange said, ‘He’s just biding his time.’

The first grey light had appeared in the east. Rose was sitting by the fire in her front room when Georgette took the spare key from beneath the mat and let herself into the apartment. The older woman was on her feet immediately and hurried into the hall. She took one look at her assistant curator and let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Thank God,’ she said, and took Georgette by the arm to lead her to the fireplace. ‘Come in, child. Warm yourself at the fire.’

‘What time is it?’ Even to herself, Georgette’s voice sounded tiny.

‘It’s almost seven. I couldn’t sleep.’

Georgette turned towards her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I might be dead by now if you hadn’t called Lange.’

Rose examined her face and Georgette saw trepidation behind the curiosity in her eyes. ‘What happened?’

And she knew that she would have to tell her. Everything.

The rain of the night before had passed, and early morning sunshine glistened on still wet cobbles in the courtyard of the Louvre. Jacques Jaujard was brisk and businesslike. He stood behind his desk in his lounge suit, smoking a cigarette, and did not ask her to sit. Georgette knew that Rose had spoken to him at length in a phone call even before it was fully light. He pushed a leather document wallet across the desk towards her.

‘Your travel documents.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘To the Musée Ingres at Montauban, where the Mona Lisa resides for the moment.’

Georgette felt as if an enormous weight had just lifted from her shoulders. At last. At long last this interminable confinement in Paris was over. But then doubt immediately crept in to cloud her relief. ‘But you told me there was no point, since my cover was blown.’

Jaujard shrugged. ‘After what happened last night there is no way you can stay in Paris. And consider this. While Wolff and Lange know about you, equally you know about them. And of Wolff’s intentions. Who better to watch over La Joconde than someone who knows exactly who it is that wants to steal her?’

He stubbed out his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.

‘No one at the Musée Ingres will know the purpose of your presence there. You will just be another assistant curator. But I have told the curator himself that I am sending you to keep a special eye on La Joconde. He doesn’t need to know why. The fewer who do, the better. But I have complete trust in René Huygue. He was curator of the department of painting here in the Louvre for ten years before the war, so if you need someone to turn to, he is your man.’ He tipped his head towards the document folder. ‘Take your papers, go home and pack. You’ll travel to Montauban by rail first thing tomorrow, leaving from the Gare Austerlitz.’ He rounded his desk to take her arm. ‘Now come walk with me.’

The Louvre was deserted. There was some activity in the basement, but the main galleries were empty. Their footsteps echoed back at them from walls once graced by priceless paintings. Sunlight laid itself down in faint yellow slabs where those windows not yet boarded up let the outside in.

Jaujard’s voice was hushed as he said, ‘What I’m about to tell you is known only to a handful of people. I’m trusting you with it because, frankly, there will be no one else better placed to make use of it for the protection of La Joconde.’

He delayed for several more paces before finally, reluctantly, letting go of his long-held secret.

‘Early in 1939, with the prospect of war on the horizon, we not only began to enact the evacuation of the Louvre, we took exceptional steps to secure the Mona Lisa from the possibility of confiscation by the Germans.’ He ran a tongue over dry lips before popping a cigarette between them and lighting it. ‘You’ve heard of André Bernard?’

‘Of course. He’s probably the most notorious forger of the twentieth century.’ Georgette stopped suddenly in her tracks. ‘You didn’t... He didn’t...’

‘I paid him a very great deal of money to create a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that would fool even the most experienced of art experts. I won’t bore you with the details, but he was virtually incarcerated in a basement room here in the Louvre every night for nearly six months. Most forgers don’t have the luxury of working from the original. Bernard did. We procured a piece of poplar board of the same vintage as da Vinci used to paint La Joconde, and he replicated the Mona Lisa in every possible tiny detail. On both sides of the wood. He aged and dulled the oils and, using heat and varnish, reproduced the Italian craquelure that so characterises her.’ He pulled long and thoughtfully on his cigarette. ‘You know, when he first showed me them side by side, I couldn’t tell the original from the copy. It’s a truly extraordinary piece of work.’

Georgette stared at him with incredulity before growing self-consciously aware that her mouth was gaping. She snapped it shut.

‘I know that you were on the team that crated the original, so you also know that we coded all the crates with a series of one, two or three coloured dots. Yellow for very valuable pieces. Green for major works. And red for world treasures. The Mona Lisa was the only work to have her crate stamped with three red dots. The forgery has been identically crated, but stamped uniquely with three yellow dots. We attached it to the same inventory as the huge canvasses that we had to strip from their frames and roll around long wooden poles for transportation. You know the ones I mean?’

Georgette said, ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Veronese? And presumably David’s Coronation of Napoleon.’

‘Yes, and Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau, as well as Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa. There are others inventoried in that batch. But the instruction is that under no circumstances are works on the same inventory to be separated.’

‘So wherever The Wedding Feast at Cana is being kept is where the other Mona Lisa can be found.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And where are they?’

‘Everything is at Montauban.’

They were standing now in a shaft of sunlight and Jaujard’s cigarette smoke hung blue in the still air, trapped by the warmth of the light, curling slowly around his head in gauze-like wreaths.

‘Does René Huygue know?’

‘He doesn’t. For all practical purposes, only you and I now know of its existence. The copy is catalogued as Sketch for the Feast.’ He paused. ‘If you believe that La Joconde is in real danger of falling into enemy hands, then I am authorising you to switch the copy for the original.’

They stood in silence for a very long time. The burden that Georgette had earlier felt lifting from her shoulders descended again, weighing even more heavily than before. This was both a momentous and a terrifying responsibility.

‘One more thing,’ Jaujard said, and the light faded in eyes which had so animated his face as he talked about the Mona Lisa and her copy. Even his skin seemed to grey. ‘The intelligence that originally came to us from Berlin, alerting us to Hitler’s designs on La Joconde, has now come up with a name. The person he has delegated to obtain the painting for his collection.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘It is Paul Lange.’

She was waiting for him on the landing outside his apartment when he returned home shortly before eight. All day, it had eaten away at her like a cancer. Her sense of betrayal. The humiliation. The realisation of just what a fool she had been. She felt sick, and exhausted, and was still trembling with anger. And there was no question about it in her mind. She had to confront him.

His face lit up as he reached the landing and saw her there. He stretched out an arm to pull her into his embrace. ‘George!’ There was undoubted pleasure in his surprise. And so he was not expecting the slap that resounded around the fourth-floor landing and stung his face. The strength of it nearly knocked him off balance, but he saw the second one coming and grasped her arm at the wrist to stop it.

‘What the hell...?’

‘You bastard!’ She struggled to free her arm from his grip, but he held on to it.

‘For God’s sake, George!’

‘You lying, cheating, duplicitous bastard!’

He became conscious suddenly that others in the building might hear this. It would be entirely inappropriate for a German officer to be assaulted and verbally abused by a French citizen. He fought to hold her at bay while he fumbled to get his key in the lock. And then finally they were in the entrance hall and he pushed her forcefully away. He shouted. And his voice seemed excessively loud in the confined space as he slammed the door shut at his heels. ‘Stop! Stop it!’

Each stood breathing hard, and glaring at the other.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

‘So Wolff is acting on instructions from Göring to seize the Mona Lisa. What you conveniently forgot to tell me is that Hitler asked you to do exactly the same thing.’

His eyes opened wide, and she found it hard to read the expression on his face. It might have been anger, or guilt, or both. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said, and strode past her into the front room. He shrugged himself free of his coat and threw it over the settee, turning to face her as she entered behind him. ‘After all this time, I might have hoped you would credit me with a little more sophistication than that.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I did not.’ He strode to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large Scotch. ‘Yes, Hitler asked me to procure the Mona Lisa for him.’ He turned to face her, glass in hand. ‘But I never had the least intention of doing it. For God’s sake, George, art has been my life. An appreciation of the one civilising factor and saving human grace in nearly two thousand relentless years of war and destruction. The Mona Lisa is, perhaps, the most important artwork in the world. The epitome of everything to which Man is capable of aspiring, a quintessential icon of what it is that sets human beings above every other animal on the planet. Art is civilisation, and the Nazis the antithesis of everything that stands for.’ He took a long, breathless draught of his Scotch. ‘Did you really believe I would betray all that for a cretinous little man like Hitler?’

Georgette stared at him, face stinging as if he had slapped her, too. She wanted so much to believe him. ‘And what’s he going to say, or do, if you don’t deliver?’

He threw a dismissive hand towards the ceiling. ‘Jesus, George, do you not think he’s got other things on his mind? The war is not going well on the Eastern Front. Rumours are rife of an imminent Allied invasion of North Africa. There’s the constant threat of an Allied invasion of Europe. I’m quite sure he’s not lying awake at night wondering why I haven’t brought him the Mona Lisa.’

‘So what were you planning to do?’

‘To keep her safe. Play a long game and hope that I’ll never be called to answer for it. And in the meantime do everything I can to keep her out of the hands of Karlheinz Wolff. Because make no mistake, Göring’s obsession with La Joconde far exceeds that of Hitler. At least Hitler wants to make her available to everyone. While Göring’s desire is to shut her away in the dark, a part of his private collection. For his eyes only.’

He drained his glass and stepped towards her. His words and his passion had stolen away all her anger, and all her doubt. He took her by the shoulders and looked earnestly into her eyes.

‘I’m here to help, George. To be around when Wolff makes his move. As he will. A week from now, a month from now. A year. Who knows? But you can bet it will come when we least expect it. Especially if the war is going badly and all eyes are elsewhere. He won’t do anything precipitous, because he won’t want to alert Hitler to Göring’s designs on her. But don’t be in any doubt. One day he’ll come for her, and we need to be there to stop him.’